The researchers cultured a fungus that, in the wild ... which secrete a substance called honeydew that ants eat. The ants “milk” the aphids by stroking the tiny insects with their antennae ...
What they're actually doing is taking these leaves back into the nest and once they're there, they use the leaves to grow a fungus. ADAM:'Leaf cutter ants, despite their name, don't eat leaves.
“These ants are amazing organisms. They cut leaves and they use that leaf material to grow a fungus for food,” explained Cameron Currie, lead researcher and a biochemistry and biomedical ...
Over time, leafcutter ants have evolved a complex system of agriculture in their nests, cultivating bumper crops of fungi that are the ants' sole food source. Foragers cut pieces of leaves from ...
the fungus is then continuously cared for. They even use pesticides to remove unwanted fungal strains or pests from their precious crop. Other ant species herd aphid 'cattle', which they eat and ...
Those ants don’t eat the leaves — instead they bring them back to their nests to feed a garden of fungi, which produce food for the ants. Researchers have now used DNA analysis to uncover just ...